Maggie's Farm

We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

Our Recent Essays Behind the Front Page

Much Sorry with Delays
Birth, Death and All That Stuff in Between
How to Honor Labor Day, Every Day
My Yom Kippur Miracle (Repost from 2010)
Good intro to fly casting
Peach update, with pie
NYC update
Easy for you to say: To the elites on mass immigration
For NYC on 9/11, Sailors' Snug Harbor
Pickled Peaches
Water Shoes
Labor Costs in U.S.
Your "identity"
Good news about The Great Courses
Uses of Hot Pepper Jelly/Sauce, Chutneys, and Jams
A Saturday Drive to Litchfield County, CT
How to Pick a Kayak
Civilized: Fruit forks and knives
Loads of kayaking on Cape Cod
Psychology Experiments' Questionable Results

Categories


All categories

Quicksearch

Links

Blog Administration

Open login screen

RSS Readers

Add to Google

Subscribe with Bloglines

Saturday, December 15. 2007

Bird of the Week: Damn Immigrants!

I am a staunch nativist when it comes to wildlife. The damn English Sparrows are really bothering me this year.

We have two pestiferous Limey bird species here in Yankeeland and in the US in general - the English Sparrow (aka House Sparrow) and the Starling.

Both were imported from Albion for a variety of silly  reasons, back before people realized that biological imports create a mess for native species. These were two highly aggressive, invasive species who have wreaked havoc on our gentle native birds. Now, the English Sparrow is the most widely distributed bird on earth.

Today, my irritation is with the English Sparrow. It is not, in fact, a lowly, timid mouselike sparrow at all, but probably a variety of European weaver finch. They are city birds, barn birds, and may fit into European ecology quite well but here they drive out our native sparrows and are dominating my bird feeder this year. I have no interest in feeding them because they can do very well feeding from dumpsters in parking lots and eating horse manure - one of their favorite treats.

As Beantown's Mayor Curley would have said, I'd ship them all back to England if I could.

More about the House Sparrow at CLO here.

Posted by The Barrister in Natural History and Conservation, Our Essays at 07:47 | Comments (7) | Trackbacks (0)

Trackbacks
Trackback specific URI for this entry

No Trackbacks

Comments
Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)

Once I switched using 100% black oil sunflower seed (as opposed to the mixed), I no longer get these sparrows at my feeders.

I read this tip on a birding forum at GardenWeb.com
#1 Lunacy on 2007-12-15 08:24 (Reply)
Safflower is eaten by house sparrows only as a last resort. Put out cheap feed nearby for them, and safflower for the birds you want to watch in the real feeder.

Inverted thistle feeders with attractive yellow cap gets you goldfinches and few house finches, if you want to specialize further.
#2 Ron Hardin (Link) on 2007-12-15 12:34 (Reply)
Love the birds, but Starlings are flying rats and House Sparrows invasive to the 13 Colonies. Am a bit conflicted b/c my mother found and saved a sparrow she took to the Menabonis who named it after her and wrote about it in one of their beautiful bird illustration books in the 50s...

Anyway, my cats are exonerated when they predate (prey upon, pray for) those birds. Mockingbird or finch feathers lying about are super bad news for my fur-bearing domesticated mammals. Such is fickled, subjective, irrational human love of (certain) animals.

Pandas make cuter bumper stickers than snail darters. Who would love a cowbird over a brown thrasher?
#3 Redstart on 2007-12-15 16:56 (Reply)
Cheap and spurious would be pitting the American Bald Eagle against the Hunchback Whale-- a meaningless leftist-conservative divide.

Found a Bill O'Neill of Montana signed pointillist print of an eagle at a resale shop. He does one crow-quill pen rendering a year, all about the American West and Liberty. Got it for a few bucks, alas. Would've paid more.

I think. That's always a tougher equation than we think.

Killing off the lowly sparrows could be heartless. They're so easy to diss in words on righteous posts. They're too easy to dislike. Something's more or less than it seems.
#4 Redstart on 2007-12-15 17:23 (Reply)
Who killed cock robin?

Nobody is going to kill the English Sparrows except my local sharp shinned hawk.
#4.1 BD on 2007-12-16 07:18 (Reply)
"Ostendamus paucis versibus
stultum esse non cavere sibi
et dare consilium aliis:
Passer obiurgabat leporem,
oppressum ab aquila, edentem fletus graves,
et inquit: "Ubi illa nota pernicitas est?
Quid pedes ita cessarunt?"
Dum loquitur,
accipiter rapit passerem necopinum
et interficit ipsum clamitantem vano questu.
Lepus semianimus:
"En: solacium mortis!
Qui modo securus inridebas nostra mala,
deploras fata tua simili querella."

I'd translate, but relearning Latin is on my list of things to do, right after weed the mint bed, admire a friend, and tackle a blank canvas.

Maggie's Farm is always an enjoyable read, BD.
#4.1.1 redstart on 2007-12-16 09:36 (Reply)
They take over our bluebird houses, we run them out, they come back. And then a woodpecker was out on one of the houses poking his friggin head in the hole. I went out to run him off, and he just stared at me! Didn't flinch. As impertinent as the deer. Probably learned it from them. Probably think this place belongs to them. Well, take a number.
#5 Terry (Link) on 2007-12-16 15:48 (Reply)
they cost us so much in chicken grain that we have had to start shooting them
#6 Sam on 2008-08-25 17:49 (Reply)

Add Comment
(Your e-mail will not show in your comment)

By commenting on this site you agree to the site rules listed here. Email
addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for email notifications.

Quick reference guide: [i] italics [/i], [b] bold [/b], [u] underline [/u],
[url] (web address) [/url]. More tips here.

Enclosing asterisks marks text as bold (*word*), underscore are made via _word_.
E-Mail addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for E-Mail notifications.

To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly.
CAPTCHA

BBCode format allowed
 
 
A Chris Southern Consulting website.